Shredded Chicken

When there's a steady supply of bread in the kitchen, sandwiches are always on the menu. Its easy to whip up a quick peanut butter snack for junior, a buttered toast for the missus or a complicated all-you-can-stuff sandwich for yours truly.
Apart from the normal chutney powder  (yum!), peanut butter and cucumber and tomatoes, I'm always on the lookout for options. An easy protein addition here is cooked and shredded chicken. With the profusion of clean poultry outlets, chicken is easier to get and there's no messy cleaning involved anymore (apart from a quick wash before use.

I look at chicken, both as sandwich stuffing as well as broth. On a winter's day, there are few comfort foods apart from chicken soup and rasam (or a combination of the two!).

Chicken soup is probably the simplest food to make, and I like mine with few frills/spices. Pour in about half a litre of water into a saucepan and add in 2 cloves of garlic, a few peppercorns, an onion(quartered), salt to taste and a piece of star anise. The latter sweetens things up just a bit in addition to the aroma. Add your cleaned chicken in (with or without skin - your choice). Cook on a medium flame for about 20mts or until the chicken is white till the bone. Skim the froth on top with a strainer and filter once more through a sieve to get your clear chicken broth. I prefer gulping this down as its made!

What you have left in your sieve are the spices (including the onion) and cooked chicken. Lay the chicken out on a cutting board and using a fork, shred the chicken. It should come of fairly easily if it has cooked till the bone. I keep most of the spices with the chicken, apart from the star anise, which has done its job by then. This is your sandwich filler - and a great one at that.

My typical pairings are sun-dried tomato pesto or basil pesto, either of which is great. You could also squish in the onion along with some salt, chilli flakes and olive oil.
The chicken lasts refrigerated about a week. I wouldnt recommend any time longer than this (if it lasts that long!)

Cream Cheese

Cream cheese is probably the easiest of the lot of cheeses to make, apart from maybe paneer. With a weakness for cream cheese based dips and spreads, I find it difficult to stay away from this sinful treat.
The basic of cream cheese is equal parts milk and cream coagulated to form cheese. Fankhauser has an amazingly simple recipe for this on his website which to most cheesemakers is the bible to start with.

Cheesecake and dip recipes to follow..

Fish In A Bag

They say you can never go wrong with fish. Cooks easy and tastes yum anytime. My experience is that it can go horribly wrong if you don't get the cooking time right or try a marinade that doesn't go with the fish you've chosen.
I happened to cook an interesting dish at the Herbs and Spices restaurant, courtesy the missus, ireboot & Manjeet (the guy who owns the place) a few years ago. The lady g'gifted' me an experience on my B'day and Manjeet was there to guide me in the kitchen. Needless to say, it was an unforgettable evening, probably my best b'day till date.
Back to today. I'd wondered whether I'd be able to replicate this dish at home with an Asian variation. The first time, the marinade and accompaniments were continental with fennel and white wine. Here's the recipe

Ingredients
1 whole fish (preferably one that will fit in your oven easily. I chose black pomfret), cleaned
2tbsp dark soy sauce
1tsp oyster sauce
1 stalk lemon grass, crushed
1tbsp grated galangal
1tsp oil
salt and pepper
1/2 cup white wine

Prepare the fish by making slits across the body.

To make the marinade, add the rest of the ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Pour this over the fish. Gently rub the marinade into the slits and make sure you've coated the fish well. Cover and place in refrigerator for at least 1hr.
Preheat the oven to 220C and begin preparing the bag. Cut out enough length of parchment paper so you'd be able to place the fish in and fold over. Before folding, add in 1/2 cup of white wine. I did this to allow enough liquid to create steam in the bag.
Start folding the parchment from one end, folding over as you go along so it resembles the picture below

Place in the oven over a rack and let cook for 15mts. My biggest fear was the bag would give way at the bottom considering the liquid in it. This seemed to be unfounded since the label on the packet said it was built to withstand temperatures upto 420F. Here is what it looked like in 15mts and on my plate.

Cut out the parchment carefully making sure you allow the steam to escape before opening it all out. Eat as is  or with some hot fragrant rice.

Notice the marinade had no chillies. I kind of liked it that way. The marinade had turned into a sweet/salt syrupy mix that you could spoon onto the fish as you ate it. Happy with the result. Cooked 4yrs ago, and hadn't forgotten. Thanks Manjeet :-)

Soupy Sundays - Potato and Leek Soup

I'd decided on cooking soup for Sunday dinners for the rest of the year, so in essence, that gives me 5 more weeks of doing this. It's more to get into the habit of cooking and writing than anything else. Its also an opportunity to taste the great foccacia the missus makes for the soups.

Well, this weeks soupy Sunday was about simplicity and treading a beaten path. With showers on over the weekend and junior's cough taking its time to settle down, I thought a thick one-pot meal would be ideal. Potato and Leeks soup is a very common soup and a great one to cook if you want to just get things done in the kitchen and retire to bed early. Here's the recipe

Ingredients

2 medium potatos, skinned and diced into 1/2 cm cubes
3 leeks, stalks removed, cleaned and diced finely
1 cup milk
2 cups water
Salt and pepper to taste
3 cloves garlic (optional)
Finely chopped green stem of leeks to garnish (optional)

Start with cooking the garlic cloves in a mixture of 1tbsp butter and 1/2 tsp oil. Cook on low for 10mts till the leeks soften. Add the potato's and cover with just enough water. Bring to a boil and then reduce to simmer for 20mts or till potato's are soft. Remove the mix and place in a blender with about half a cup of water from the soup.Blend as desired. I let a few chunks of potato lie in the mix. Add this back to the remaining liquid in the broth and stir in the blended mix. Add the milk and stir, all the while simmering the soup. Add salt and pepper to taste. Ladle out hot into bowls and serve with bread.

Playing with Fire - Roasted Pepper Dip

Roasting red and yellow peppers has gotten really addictive since I tried it a while ago. The process is simple enough and for the amount of baking we do, it certainly is convenient, especially as you pre-heat the oven when making bread.
Once roasted, the skins peel off real easy and the resulting pepper is sweet as ever. Turning this into a dip is super easy - depends on what you want the final product to turn to muhamara or just a plain dip with fresh baked pita pockets.

Ingredients
4 roasted and skinned peppers
2tbsp olive oil
1tsp balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
a pinch of chilly powder - as per your taste,remember, these peppers have a hint of heat still left in them


Blend all the ingredients together. The resulting dip can be used as a spread, dip or marinade for light meat like chicken. My pairing was with some terribly good sourdough from Breadworks which, in my opinion, continues to be the best sourdough source in Bangalore.

Soupy Sundays - Mushroom Soup with Focaccia

Winters here in Bangalore and it sure is chilly. The bright sun doesnt seem to be warming things up a lot so the garden is suffering. Wilted Poblano's and Jalapeno's and dying papaya saplings make a sorry tale.
Once the moping is done, its time to satiate the stomach. Decided to make the rest of the Sundays in the year 'soupy dinners'.
With the missus' ability to churn out breads at the drop of a hat (foccacia seems to be the mood), I added a complement of Mushroom soup with some really fresh looking button mushrooms bought over the weekend. This one is real easy and takes less than 20mts to make.

Ingredients
1/2 an onion, chopped into slices, dont worry about cutting these fine
1 packet of button mushrooms cleaned and roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup of red wine
1/2 cup milk (optional)
3 cups water (no broth here, I prefer it to be all 'mushroomy')
1/2 cup cream (optional)
1tsp cornstarch
salt & pepper to taste

 Add the garlic to hot oil in a saucepan . Add onions and cook till they brown. I like them to carmelize before deglazing the pan with the red wine. Once done, add the mushrooms and let them cook for about 5mts, taking care not to crowd them in the pan.

Once cooked, place all contents in a blender and puree to a fine paste. Remove and replace in the pan with the water. Bring to a gentle simmer adding the milk and cream. Simmer for a couple of minutes more and add salt and pepper as per your tastes. Pour and garnish with whatever you have lying around. I used Chopped chives from the garden and some roasted pepper dip. Serve with warm toasted bread. Luckily, we had freshly made foccacia

Notice there's no chilly here. I like my soups muted and like the main ingredient to stand on its feet with just a hint of salt and pepper.

Roast Chicken - Beer Style

Maggie Beer's got a great recipe for roast chicken using verjuice which looks really awesome. Though i didnt have verjuice, I thought i'd substitute a rather local ingredient which I have used before in other recipes - pomegranate juice.
Roasting a whole chicken can be quite an exercise if your oven is not big enough. With a 40L oven, i just about had enough space for the right air circulation, coupled with a convection fan, not something you see very regularly on most ovens you get in India. Here's the recipe

Ingredients

1 whole clove garlic
1 chicken with skin and cleaned
1 sprig rosemary, finely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lime juice
1 cup pomegranate juice (fresh, no canned)
Salt and pepper for the rub

Maggie suggests cooking the garlic in hot water for a few minutes before you roast it. I stuck with keeping them in foil for the entire period of roasting

mix the salt, pepper and rosemary and slather over the chicken, making sure you go under the skin and inside the cavity as well.

The rest of the recipe pretty much resembles hers, so I'm no going to repeat, except where I substituted verjuice for pomegranate, which gave it a bit of a delicious sweetish taste. Accompaniments were fresh baked bread and a side of guacamole.